18 January 2000

We went to Tacloban on Sunday night.  We took an air con van.  It picked us up at our house at 9:00 pm.  We were thinking ahead and brought our pillows.  It made sleeping easier, but it was still only on-and-off sleep.  In Borongan, the van picked up a woman.  She was quite attractive, and she ended up sitting on the back bench with us next to Elder Wetenkamp.  She was tired, too, I guess.  In her sleep, she ended up resting her head on Elder Wetenkamp's shoulder a few times.  For one stretch of the ride, Wetenkamp and I were momentarily not tired and started having a conversation.  As we talked, we noticed our seat-mate moving around a lot, seemingly not able to find a comfortable position.  Since Elder Wetenkamp wasn't using his pillow at the time, he offered it to her.  She took it gratefully.  I guess all she needed was something to cuddle with, because she just hugged it instead of resting her head on it.  So later, all three of us fell asleep.  I slept with my forehead resting on the seat in front of me, and our good-looking seat-mate was leaning back holding Elder Wetenkamp's pillow over her lap and torso (she was pretty small).  I woke up first and looked to my right as I sat up.  I was pretty surprised by what I saw.  Elder Wetenkamp had, in his sleep, ended up with his head on the pillow in her lap.  I sat just looking at the somewhat alarming (we were missionaries, remember; we couldn't even hug a woman) yet humorous situation.  Right before I was going to wake him up, he woke up on his own.  He sat up, looking at where his head was coming from, looked at me, back at the woman's lap, back at me, and then we both started laughing.  Later, when we were all awake and almost to our destination, Elder Wetenkamp started having a conversation with her.  It turns out she's quite a bit older than we thought she was.  She's divorced and has a lot of kids.  When he started to guess her age, she said, "Huwag na lang" (Tagalog for: "Just don't") and playfully pushed his face away.

We got to Tacloban around 4:30 am and went to the office staff apartment.  Elder Mulholland let us in, and we caught a couple of hours of sleep.  After we read our mail at the office, Elder Mulholland took us to the hospital.  They took a blood sample, and we hung around down town while they tested it.  After an hour, we got the results back.  My blood/sugar level is normal.  I'm no diabetic!  We traveled to Borongan last night, then came back to Guiuan this morning.  Life is back to normal now.